![]() “The final step is NASA certification of their AFTS and the timing for completion of that is being driven by NASA.” “The launch vehicle and pad are ready for launch,” she said. 12 that completion of the AFTS is the final step before the company will be ready to launch from Wallops. Rocket Lab spokesperson Morgan Bailey confirmed Nov. “We recognize it’s a game-changing technology, so we want to do it and release it to private industry as soon as it’s safe to do so.” “We’re in this for the long haul,” he said. That unit, he added, will also be available to other companies launching from Wallops. “We expect that, under the current rate in which we’re developing and correcting the code errors, we should be ready to certify that unit in the first half of ’21,” he said. That review involved teams at NASA’s Katherine Johnson Independent Verification and Validation Facility, the Federal Aviation Administration, Vandenberg Air Force Base and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.Įngineers are now working to address those problems, the number or severity of which he didn’t elaborate on. “When they sent the unit out for review of the software, we found some errors,” he said. “We’re working really hard to support Rocket Lab with a launch in ’21.”Īsked later about the certification of the AFTS, Pierce said that engineers had kept on schedule with the development of the system into the summer despite the pandemic. “We’re really proud of our work with Rocket Lab,” he said. 10 talk at a Maryland Space Business Roundtable webinar, David Pierce, director of NASA Wallops, mentioned preparations for Rocket Lab’s first launch as part of an overview of the facility’s activities. “There’s a very long certification process that, quite frankly, we probably underestimated how long it would take,” Peter Beck, chief executive of Rocket Lab, said in an interview in August. NASA controls the launch range at the Wallops Flight Facility, where LC-2 is located. One reason for the delay, Rocket Lab said, was that it was waiting on NASA to certify the autonomous flight termination system (AFTS) that will be used on the rocket to provide range safety. The company performed a dress rehearsal of the launch in the spring, including a static-fire test of the rocket’s nine first-stage engines. ![]() Preparations for that launch were slowed by the pandemic, but Rocket Lab said in the spring it anticipated a launch in the fall. military Space Test Program mission called STP-27RM, in the second quarter of 2020. The company completed the launch site in December 2019, stating at the time it anticipated performing the first launch there, of a U.S. Rocket Lab had planned to conduct the first launch from its Launch Complex (LC) 2 at Wallops Island, Virginia, this year. WASHINGTON - The first launch of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket from a site in the United States won’t take place until 2021 because of problems with the flight termination system NASA requires the rocket to use.
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